Not long ago I was chatting with a couple of middle-schoolers when one casually dropped the word existentialist into the conversation. Startled, I backtracked to ask where on earth she'd heard the term and who had taught her what it meant. “Everybody in our generation uses it,” she and her brother shrugged. The concept was so embedded in their mental landscape they literally couldn't recall when it first entered their vocabulary or their hearts. A little skeptical, I pressed further. As we talked it became clear Alex and James understood the term perfectly and were serious in claiming it for themselves. They spoke quickly and surely of a despair brought on by “the politicians, the planet, all that stuff….” They had learned the climate tipping point would hit within their lifetimes and felt helpless in the face of catastrophe. Alex described a moment when she'd been trapped underwater beneath a piece of equipment, unable to breathe. She said she suddenly realized "We all die and in the end nothing really matters." Her brother had seen her tumble and rescued her, but both were shaken by the incident. While they agreed on the bleakness of their likely future, they sparred a bit on meaninglessness. Neither sees religion contributing anything of value to the conversation. Instead they find hope in music, glimpses of beauty and moments when people come together spontaneously on behalf of kindness. Their generation's angst finds expression in musicals like Dear Evan Hansen, a Broadway hit chronicling high school students' desperate search for meaning and belonging in the wake of a classmate's suicide.. An adult friend of mine saw the show recently and lamented its despair; James and Alex cite it as a source of strength. They hear their struggles echoed in songs like You Will Be Found:Have you ever felt like nobody was there? Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere? Have you ever felt like you could disappear? Like you could fall, and no one would hear?Later verses express their hope:Even when the dark comes crashing through When you need a friend to carry you And when you're broken on the ground You will be found. James and Alex are well resourced and well nurtured, but they suffer from what Viktor Frankl calls “existential stress.” They feel betrayed by the universe and the adults who are supposed to be watching out for them. They are searching for a coherent vision in a world that offers too many cynical and confusing choices. When asked what they considered the purpose of life, they answered, "To be happy - and to make a positive difference." I was impressed. When I inquired about the percentage of their classmates who would have a similar response, they hesitated. "Some of them don't think about much of anything," James said ruefully. Alex and James are exceptionally articulate and obviously comfortable with big questions. They are clearly finding their way, at least so far. Not all young people are so fortunate, as our rising teen suicide rate attests. Research indicates a sense of meaning and purpose is essential for humans to truly thrive. Yet only one in five high school students and one in three college students studied claimed a clear sense of purpose. Most of Alex and James' conversations on the topic have been with peers rather than adults; many took place online. Every young person can benefit from a wise mentor as they begin this critical search. William Damon in The Path To Purpose notes that adults cannot create a sense of purpose for children, but we can offer options. At the very least we can learn how to get out of the way and quit putting up false road signs. We can tell stories that are true, share visions that matter and bear witness to suffering and hope. If we're willing to do our own internal work we may even be able to be a Yoda for some young person. May we all be found in the process.

Regardless of your politics, this interview with band leader Jon Batiste is a moving tribute to moments of grace and the power of music to help bring them to us. Click here or on the photo for the interview.

Psalm 118:28-29You are my God, and I will thank you;you are my God, and I will exalt you.Give thanks to the Lord, for the Lord is good;God’s mercy endures forever.

I’ve been keeping a prayer journal for the last year or so. It started early in 2018, during the dark, post-holiday days of January when everything seemed bleak and my days consisted of too much work, too much Netflix, too much wine, and too many chocolate chips straight from the bag. I decided that keeping a journal of things I was thankful for could provide a way out of the sad little place I was in. And so it began: each morning I considered what I was thankful for, and wrote it down. Usually, my attempts to engage in spiritual discipline are short-lived, but for some reason, it stuck. I’ve written in my journal nearly every morning ever since. Without any deliberate planning, the “thankful” journal evolved into a prayer journal. It wasn’t that I ran out of things to be thankful for, it was just that I needed to pray…about everything – my family and friends, my work, our nation, the environment, my daily worries and joys, and for wisdom, for peace, for patience. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I read through the hundreds of entries made over the course of the year. I was struck by the staggering volume of worry contained within them. I was even more struck that my memory of the past year was different — more positive — than what the pages revealed. In fact, I had forgotten about many of the things I was so concerned about. When I thought about the past year and compared my memory to the contents of my prayer journal’s pages, there was a disconnect. Who was this anxious person represented in the pages? Where had she gone? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. About the experience of laying out my troubled and joyful heart before God, and how that act changed my perception of my life, the lives of those around me, and the world. I believe that somehow, in the act of persistent praying, I came to experience and see things differently. God has been at work in my life, one entry at a time. I think I’ll keep journaling.

--Ruth Dalager BuuckPreviously published inGrace University Lutheran Church Lenten E--votionals

The speaker is a dedicated, creative woman who has been working as a church professional for many years. She is weary. The same good heart that drew her to a career supporting the life of the spirit makes her especially sensitive to the conflict and turmoil swirling around us all. Fatigue and discouragement are getting to her. She’s not alone.

Fraying At The EdgesEven veteran political and religious leaders express deep concern about the darkness of our days. Anger and discord seem to hang in the air like smoke from a wildfire. Mother Nature has apparently lost her mind as unprecedented storms, droughts and disasters lay waste to whole regions. The perennial tragedies of poverty, violence and war close in and multiply as our world grows ever smaller and more interconnected. The hectic pace of Western society and our own exaggerated expectations of the good life get in the way of our happiness.At the same time our religious institutions - our traditional guardians of the spirit - are fraying and fading through a combination of scandal, polarization, secularization and simple boredom. The institutions we have depended on to provide a sense of stability and security are instead rocking the boat and messing with the steering.We need swift, wise, and courageous action to address the crises around us, but it’s difficult to be skillful or brave when our spirits are flagging. Many of us are limping along, our hearts tattered, or we’ve protected ourselves by shutting down. Or perhaps we look up one day and realize we are somewhere we never intended or wanted to be. For our own sake, and the sake of those we care about, we need to find practical methods of keeping our hearts strong and our direction clear.In so many areas of our lives we’ve become either trapped inside our heads or locked into a reflex emotional response to outside events. If we think about faith at all, we get sidetracked into theological debates, deluded into thinking we’ve got things covered if our particular Theory of Everything trumps our opponents’ pitiful Theory of Everything.But life is about much more than theories. It’s about capacity, about spirit, about the way to be and behave in the world. Much of what’s most important we know through our hearts, not our heads. Our hearts are not pure emotion, but neither are they pure reason. A wise heart can grasp things intuitively when both reason and emotion come up short. We don’t decide whether or whom to marry solely by consulting an asset/liability list, nor do we decide whether to live an egotistical or a generous life based simply on spreadsheets. Intuition rightly trumps logic more often than we’d like to believe.Our hearts not only guide us - they also give us the energy to live according to convictions. But many age-old daily rhythms that traditionally nourished our spirits have fallen away. We need to learn from some of the vanishing old ways and find other new methods of creating time and space to replenish our spirits.

Or as Albert Schweitzer put it when asked to name humanity's most pressing question, "Is the universe friendly?"

More and more people question whether anyone or anything is watching out for us on a cosmic level. The "new atheist" authors are convinced that any belief in God is sheer foolishness. The complexity of life and the overwhelming suffering in the world leave many of us beset by doubts. Yet doubt is a part of life. Many years ago I heard the rector of the St. Paul Seminary say, "Anyone who has never doubted is either a liar or a fool." While I know a few people who've been gifted with an unwavering faith, most of us wonder, especially when times are tough.

Often the debate rests on what appears to be a logical argument between science and religion. I would hold that science and religion ask different questions. Science can tell us that rainbows occur when light is refracted through water droplets, perceived by our eyes and processed by our brains. Science can't explain why 99% of the human race call rainbows beautiful, and why our first response to a rainbow is to catch our breath and stop in wonder - at the beauty, not the physics.

The God/science discussion is obviously way more complicated than that simple summary. My point here is that the scientific method has its limits. We make the biggest decisions of our lives - who and whether to marry, whether to live a generous or an exploitive life - on something other than logic and careful measurement. Our best life decisions don't ignore logic, but they are heavily influenced by intuition and the heart. So an intellectual debate about the existence of a Divine Being is only part of the search. Another path is the road toward encounter.

My husband told me this morning he saw what he thinks are fox tracks in the snow in our back yard. A debate about the existence of foxes and their usual habitat will not tell me whether he's right. The only way I can know for sure is to keep watch - quietly and patiently. If I don't see a fox, it doesn't mean there are no fox in our neighborhood. If I see a fox tonight, there is no guarantee I will observe a repeat tomorrow night. The fact that fox are unpredictable does not mean they don't exist. The fact that spiritual experiences are not as predictable as gravity does not mean they're not real.

My purpose is not to try to prove that God exists. I do want to suggest that by watching carefully, over a period of time, we may encounter something unexpected. I also suggest that, barring an outburst of grace, without a patient search we can't arrive at an answer.

We can argue the Sacred out of our world, or we can set up camp and watch for its presence. Spiritual practices up our chances of catching a glimpse of the fox in our woods. Some practices equip us to watch solo. Some offer us the benefit of other seekers' wisdom, experience and company. The percentage of people in the world who know how to track an actual wild animal has dropped dramatically over the last century. Linking up with skillful tracker can increase my chances of seeing an elusive fox.

Industrialization has taken a toll on our spiritual as well as our physical environment. We are short on space in our lives to notice God's action, and we've found some of our guides to be seriously flawed. Yet true guides are abundant, especially if we look back into our spiritual history. Saints and heroes like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Francis of Assisi, Desmond Tutu and Badshah Khan would all say they could not have achieved what they did or become who they were without strength that came from beyond themselves. We have nothing to lose but a little time if we decide to learn some of their techniques for following tracks in the snow.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do... I have the desire to do what is good, but cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Romans 7:15, 18b-19

We’ve all had the experience of saying or doing something and immediately regretting it. “How could I have done that??!!” we wonder. For hundreds of years philosophers explained that our intellect and will constituted our “higher selves,” and that we needed to “subdue our passions.” We were encouraged to energetically scold ourselves, “Straighten up!” “Stop feeling that way!” "Get your act together!"

Which unfortunately doesn’t work very well. Those messy moments we all experience aren’t simply failures in character. Our brains aren’t designed to respond perfectly to vigorous self-talk, at least not when we’re emotionally upset. The more we understand how our brains do work, the more effectively we can steer ourselves toward greater peace and better behavior.

Neuroscientist Paul MacLean suggests the brain is divided into three basic parts. The theory described below is an oversimplification, but it holds enough truth to be useful in understanding ourselves:

1) The most primitive part of the brain governs basic functions like breathing and our sense of balance and physical location in the world. It is sometimes called the "reptilian brain" because fish and snakes share the same capacities.

2) The second, or limbic, section of the brain holds all the abilities we share with dogs, dolphins and elephants. It includes memory, our alarm system, and a wide range of emotions, including attachment to others. (These emotions are more than just brain functions, but that’s a topic for another post.)

3) The outermost layer of the brain, the cerebral cortex, is unique to human beings. It is the site of our analytical thinking and controls capacities like language and impulse control.

So what? Why bother learning about this? It turns out the interaction among these three parts or our brains is one cause of our many human missteps. The limbic brain is designed to override our thinking brain in an emergency. If someone grabs you from behind on a dark street or your toddler suddenly starts to gag, you don’t have time to logically examine all your alternatives. It doesn’t matter what your attacker looks like or what precisely is giving your little one trouble. You need to take action. This aspect of brain function can work for us when we’re under immediate physical threat but against us in a disagreement with an employer or a loved one.

So do we just give up on urging ourselves to be more patient, understanding or generous? Obviously not. Instead, we can learn to use spiritual practices that touch our emotions directly in order predispose ourselves to listen to the wiser urging of our thinking brain - and the Holy Spirit.

I can trash social media with the best of them. Yes, technology disrupts our lives and sometimes fries our brains. The sight of seventh graders sitting shoulder to shoulder after school, thumbs flying, oblivious to one another’s presence, makes me shiver. I weary of the constant battle - with grandkids and with myself - to tame the monster.

But seriously, what would we do without our smartphones? And who knew technology could help us pray??!! In an ideal world we wouldn’t need outside help, but nobody I know lives in an ideal world. In the real world I can use all the help I can get.

I use two apps on a regular basis to help me stick with my morning prayer/meditation routine. My favorite is InsightTimer, which is free and pretty amazing. I use it primarily for the timer function, which saves me from peeking at my watch when I should be thinking deep thoughts. If you like you can also set it to sound a few times during your meditation to remind you this is serious business, just in case you've forgotten and started planning out your daily itinerary instead. (Unfortunately, on a really bad day i can get to the end of my 20 minutes and not even remember hearing the gong.) You can select from different sounds to begin and end your session and how long you’d like to spend.

The app has classes available for purchase, but there are so many free guided meditations available you could listen to a different one every day for the rest of your life. Granted, some of them would be terrible, but they’d be free. You can also form an online group and check out who in your town is meditating and what they’re listening to. (Some people would call that Too Much Information.)

Most guided meditations on the app are secular or lean toward Buddhism or Hinduism. Christian meditations are available but rather scarce, not because the owners discriminate against Christians but because there's a scarcity of Christian teachers. Which is pretty interesting, when you think about it.

My second favorite app is Pray-As-You-Go, put out six days a week by Jesuits in England. PAYG reflects on the Scripture reading of the day for ten to twelve minutes. It begins each session with a contemplative piece of music. A narrator then reads the Scripture passage for the day and another invites a reflection and application to your own life. The Scripture passage is reread during the remaining few moments and the session closes with a doxology: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.”They've expanded their offerings to include other forms of prayer, several of which are familiar only to Catholics. They're worth exploring, but I usually stick with the Scripture reflection.

I tend not to use this one when I’m on track with my spiritual regimen, but lean on it gratefully when life is hectic or hard. The combination of music and narration sometimes gets a little busy for my taste if my mind is behaving, but when I'm wound up they're just what I need to wrestle my brain back to business.

My shallow side loves the English accents because they make me feel like I’m traveling in Narnia, the land of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I also notice that my brain quiets more easily when I listen than when I read a reflection.

This is just a small sampling of available resources. The biggest challenge these days is sorting through all the options to find one that works for you. The great thing about apps is that if you find one you like, you can listen in the car, at lunch, in the morning seated with coffee and a candle, while watching soccer practice.

These two are available online at www.insighttimer.com or www.pray-as-you-go.org or wherever you access your apps. And no, I am not receiving any compensation for recommending these. They're really and truly helpful.

We’ve all heard those words, most often when we weren’t in the mood to listen. We’ve scolded ourselves for not being grateful - also, most likely, when gratitude wasn’t coming easily.

Yet gratitude is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal for building spiritual resilience. Gratitude actually holds the power to nudge us away from depression and anxiety and toward greater peace with our world.

So What Exactly Is Gratitude?

Gratitude is not the same as appreciation, although appreciation is a good first step. When we appreciate something or someone we stop to notice, to pay attention. We take the opportunity to register and savor the awesomeness of the moment. Appreciation is taking time to notice just how cool someone or something is.

Gratitude looks further to the source of the goodness. When I appreciate a plate of lasagna, I take a good look at it, I smell the delicious aroma, I pay attention to what’s on my fork and in my mouth without being overly distracted by what’s going on in the room. I appreciate the meal but I’m not considering how the meal got to my plate.

When I’m grateful I also acknowledge the cook’s skill and the time invested in preparing the meal. I can grow my circle of gratitude to include those who grew the ingredients and transported them to my grocery store. If I dig even deeper I can expand my scope to include the planet that sustains my life and ultimately to the One who created it all.

The online Oxford Dictionary goes one step further, defining gratitude as thankfulness and “a readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” Pretty powerful plate of lasagna.

Simply telling ourselves or our kids to be grateful doesn’t often make much difference. On the other hand, consciously shifting our attention toward the blessings in our lives can. I used to ask my high school students to list fifty things they were grateful for. I knew if they wrote a short list they would probably get stuck in clichés, but as they stretched to fill those last twenty slots their lists became much more interesting.I will never forget one student’s entry. She’d been injured as an infant while in the care of a negligent babysitter, and her beautiful face bore a noticeable scar even after several surgeries. On her list, without any explanation, was, “My scar.” I was humbled by her wisdom.

A Gratitude Practice

A spiritual practice is a concrete action we engage in on a regular basis in order to bring ourselves back to what's real. There are lots of ways to establish a practice of gratitude. You could make your own list of 50 and review it frequently, but most of us will forget, lose the list, get bored and figure it all takes too much time.

An alternative is to choose a time or event that happens regularly in your day, such as a meal, getting up in the morning, commuting to work, etc. Pick one recurring event and commit to thanking God in that moment for at least five people or things in your life. If possible, take time to really be present to each item on your list. Try to focus long enough that the gratitude actually registers on a feeling level. Pick a "target frequency" - say five times a week, and then give it your best shot.

There's actually research out there saying a gratitude practice can make you happier. Check it out if you don't believe me. You don’t have to take their word for it either. Give it a try for two weeks and see what happens. Then write and let us know how it goes.

A long time ago, when Sigmund Freud first started talking about the inner workings of the human mind, the conversation was pretty grim. Attention focused on what was wrong with people: hysteria, neuroses, complexes, fixations. For decades psychologists and psychoanalysts worked earnestly to help clients rid themselves of these sometimes-crippling disorders. As psychology fought to be taken seriously, researchers carefully studied a wide range of human dysfunction, offering important new insights to the world.

Which was good, but in hindsight a little lopsided. Around twenty-five years ago a few rebels started noticing that very little was being said about the positive aspects of human nature. Research on qualities like altruism, love or joy was almost nonexistent, and positive emotions were rarely mentioned in the professional literature. In time the field of “positive psychology” was born, and new research heralded our capacity for resilience, compassion and healing.

About ten years ago I stumbled across an article written by Dr. George Vaillant, a researcher and professor of psychiatry at Harvard University. Dr. Vaillant pointed out the existence of what he called “spiritual emotions.” He noted that spiritual emotions like gratitude, compassion, joy, awe, trust, love and hope all direct us beyond our own survival toward something greater. He drew on the work of Barbara Frederickson, who points out that such emotions prompt us to cooperate with others to create new and better solutions. Fear, on the other hand, causes us to narrow our focus and grow rigid and reactive in our thinking.

The article caught my attention and I’ve returned to it many times. Vaillant offered me a new vantage point for responding to our troubled times. These days when I look at religious or political institutions I see structures in trouble. Those structures are essential to life together, especially when we live together in large groups. But when they get unbalanced they can be like an overloaded freight train rounding a curve too fast. We’re seeing a lot of high-speed teetering these days.

If dogma and institutions are the bones and muscles of religion, I would see spiritual emotions as the heart and circulatory system. To paraphrase St. Paul, we can’t live without bones or muscles, but we also can’t expect femurs or biceps to feed themselves. Spiritual emotions provide the energy and healing power we need to keep us going.

George Vaillant is now in his eighties and graciously carries the wisdom of age. Over the years his message has become ever more focused: the foundation of human thriving is love. He reminds us that happiness arrives more surely as a byproduct rather than an object of our actions. When we try to make ourselves happy we often just make ourselves tired. When we remember to be grateful, to forgive, to pay attention to the hearts of the quirky people around us, we are often, as C.S. Lewis said, “surprised by joy.”